


“Love and Duty: Ellie Skye, Princess and Advisor to the Princess of Theed”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Betrayal, Civil War, Devotion, Expanded Universe Character(s), F/M, Fragile Health, Grief/Mourning, Handmaidens, Healing, Injury, Loss, M/M, Near Death Experience, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Physical rehabilitation, Politics, Psychological Trauma, Sacrificial ethics, Service, Sith, Sith machinations, Slavery, Trauma, War, dark side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-15
Updated: 2007-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:10:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fifty random (but essentially chronological, if with some overlap) moments from the life of Ellie Skye, the extremely young replacement Princess of Theed following the election of former Princess of Theed Padmé Naberrie to the throne of Naboo. There is a story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Love and Duty: Ellie Skye, Princess and Advisor to the Princess of Theed”

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Ellie Skye’s life (pretty much up until the end of the third book of _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ ), as she’s been alluded to and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_. If anything doesn’t make sense, please feel free to ask! Also, please be aware that, while there is some controversy over whether or not “Princess Ellie” should be rightfully included among the canon/EU characters, I for one find it too amusing that Madison Lloyd, the little sister of Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker in TPM, for those who don’t know), should play the Princess of Theed in TPM to even seriously think about leaving her out of my AU! Since she’s barely in the film at all, though, and I haven’t been able to find any recent pictures of the actress, readers may want to keep in mind the fact that I’ve used model Gemma Ward as a visual template for the adult Ellie!
> 
>  **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, for anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU trilogy _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ , in my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the (somewhat limited in scope) lens of Ellie Skye’s eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I snatched up from somewhere or another on the LJ (I really don’t recall from where, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not actually meant to function as a response to whatever the challenge really is that’s associated with said prompt set on the LJ. I just used the prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Ellie, adjusting for names/concepts that wouldn’t fit in the GFFA as I went and filling in my own idea for the last prompt, which was labeled a _writer’s choice_! **3.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for original characters (like the handmaiden Surana Barakis ) should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU (Expanded Universe) characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! While some of the handmaidens for Ellie have yet to be cast, currently, there will be an expanded list of them published amongst these lists sometime (hopefully) in the near future!
> 
>  **Story Notes:** **1.)** Since this is part of a larger on-going AU series that in some respects fairly closely mirrors or follows events of canon (up to a certain point, anyway), readers should please keep in mind that certain characters and events from the prequel movies/novelizations of the films and even events/places/people referenced in the EU or Expanded Universe may be mentioned or alluded to in this story. If anyone has any questions about whether someone or something is AU, canon, or EU canon, please feel free to ask! **2.)** Readers should probably be aware that I am roughly estimating (guestimating might be a better word) the original publication date for most of the character study pieces in the **_You Became to Me_** series (and indeed most of my stories, especially the ones written over a long period of time), based on when I roughed out notes for them in the story notebooks I carry everywhere with me and when I can recall having worked on certain groups of characters. The year is going to be accurate, but the month might be off and the day will almost certainly be randomly chosen, since the online account I had originally posted many of these stories to no longer exists. I tend to go back and edit things that are in series whenever I get the time or a new idea causes me to have to make room for something else plot-wise, and odds are good that a story could have been edited for typos as recently as the day of its posting here, but the original version will likely be much older and fairly close to the publication date that I attach to it, if anyone's curious!

**“Love and Duty: Ellie Skye, Princess and Advisor to the Princess of Theed”**

 

 **01.) Love:** It was love – love of her people; love of her beautiful city; love of politics; love of that indescribable feeling of almost holy joy that comes when one is doing good and working for others so hard and so frantically that nothing else exists but the work and the need to do it and the perfect rhythm of steady accomplishment – that made her choose the career path she did, that made her accept her hasty, last-minute nomination for the position of Princess of Theed, after the current Princess of Theed unseated the corrupt Veruna and became Queen of Naboo, not any crass desire for power or position, though likely few if any not from Naboo (and perhaps also Alderaan and Chandrila) or the Jedi Temple would ever understand or believe such reasons.

 **02.) Hate:** The Great Lady advocates love and acceptance and forgiveness and tolerance and personal growth; yet, she cannot help but hate the power-hungry, cred-grubbing Trade Federation criminals, given the harm that they’re doing to her planet and people (and for no other reason than their own desire for profit!), first with their unreasonable demands and unfair trade embargo, then with their patently illegal blockade, and later with their wholly unlawful invasion.

 **03.) Pain:** The pain of failure is so breath-taking that it takes her a while to realize she’s actually been hit, in the process of escaping the roundup so they can flee down through the secret passages of the Palace and so make their way to a safe place.

 **04.) Joy:** She felt such joy when she was elected and was full of such optimism for the future that it’s hard to believe things could have gone so wrong and gotten so completely awful so very quickly; yet, the throbbing agony of her grazed (and so badly blistered, to the point of bleeding) left arm and side tell her, irrefutably, that this is no mere nightmare, however much she might like to believe it to be.

 **05.) Fear:** At first she’s far too busy running for fear to really register through the panicked rush; as soon as they’ve gotten far enough away to begin to feel safe, though, the adrenaline abruptly runs out, and she begins to shake uncontrollably, her suffering and exhausted body wracked with shivers so violent that even her teeth chatter.

 **06.) Trust:** It’s true that, in many ways, she’s still trying to adjust to the reality of having her own sworn handmaidens; she understands enough, though, to know that the trust between a sworn Lady and her handmaidens is meant to be absolute and sacrosanct, and so she has a hard time understanding why and how Queen Amidala could have purposefully ordered some of the handmaidens who were with her and who could have easily gone with her to instead stay behind, when she left Naboo with the Jedi . . . or at least she does until it finally occurs to her that Amidala was (foolishly, perhaps, but nonetheless undoubtedly motivated by the very best of intentions) probably just trying to protect her youngest, most vulnerable handmaidens from being killed or captured, as came so perilously close to being the case with the Queen and her companions, when she fled the planet.

 **07.) Betray:** She’s determined not to betray just how much pain she’s in, from her wound, because she’s so sure that others (doubtlessly more seriously hurt than she may be) deserve to have whatever (likely far too few) medicines and care they have available; her handmaidens can tell that something is wrong, though, and they refuse to be put off, nagging at her until they finally get her to agree to call for a brief stop, so that everyone else can rest while the wounded (included Ellie) are all thoroughly looked over by one of the Queen’s handmaidens who has (luckily enough) had some training as an emergency medic, which effectively puts an end to her attempts at prevarication about the wound’s seriousness.

 **08.) Promise:** She made a solemn promise to the people of Theed and to the Queen of Naboo, to uphold the peaceful process of a just democracy and to protect the rights and freedoms and safety of the residents of Theed, and she absolutely refuses to let a stupid graze from a blaster keep her from helping the people now, when they have such an undeniable need for strong leadership, especially not because of the cluckings of a passel of nervous handmaidens she shouldn’t by all rights even have to fuss at her!

 **09.) Appreciate:** It’s a cynical way of looking at things, perhaps, but if nothing else, she gets the feeling that the blockade and invasion are going to teach her (and a whole lot of others, too) to appreciate all of the little things in life that beings so often take for granted and to know what real privation actually feels like.

 **10.) Annoy:** She tries as hard as she can not to let the (over)protectiveness of her handmaidens (sworn chosen companions she possesses only because, despite her misgivings, she let herself be swayed by Queen Amidala and her worries about security, even though the tradition of chosen companions/handmaidens has _never_ been extended from the monarchy to the elected heads of the major cities and provinces of Theed and she is the first Princess of Theed ever to have sworn handmaidens of her own, just as if she were as important and in need of protection as the very Queen of Naboo) annoy her, but for pity’s sake, she’s the elected Princess of Theed, not some delicate little flower likely to faint at the notion of hard work or a child liable to shriek at the sight of blood, and if they believed in her enough to have been willing to swear themselves to her, then they should at least have the common decency to trust that she’s aware enough of her limits not to deliberately push (too far) past them!

 **11.) Death:** The death of her first handmaiden, Aoleni, during the actual invasion (when the Trade Federation was initially trying to round up all of the political figures in Theed and some paranoid, murderous thug ordered a droid to open fire on a set of offices without trying to call for a surrender, first), hit her like a proverbial ton of bricks (which is, quite possibly, why she didn’t move quickly enough to manage to get cleanly away, when the loyal Nabooians in the group she was rounded up with finally made a break for it); by the seventh death, though, she’s begun to go numb, and she fears, in a distant sort of detached way, the inevitable breakdown that will indubitably come, when she’s had the safety and room and time and peace (or at least quiet) to adequately process everything that’s happened enough for all of those deaths to really hit her.

 **12.) Blood:** She doesn’t even realize she’s been hurt (again) in the blast until Jinna’s hand comes away from her back smeared with blood, and, as things begin to go dim and out of focus (all the colors and light in the room bleeding together and fading in a sickening swirl towards darkness), it occurs to her that adrenaline really can be a double-edged blade, considering how much of the body’s reality it can obscure.

 **13.) Grave** : Tradition dictates that the deceased be burned and their ashes scattered in Solleu River, but they’ve had to content themselves with making a certain abandoned underground warehouse into a mass grave of sorts, bodies of those slain in battle or attempted escape (or just for the hell of it, by the bullies recruited by the Trade Federation to “keep the peace”) preserved in stasis fields so that they can later be accorded the proper treatment and ritual that their heroic deeds more than merit.

 **14.) Life:** She and Dané (a handmaiden with shockingly vibrant red hair from the second class of handmaidens recruited for Amidala) take turns making motivational speeches – their words sent out on waves, taking advantage of the fact that no one uses old-fashioned radio anymore and so no one thinks to monitor it – reminding the people that life is not truly life without freedom and safety from persecution and that their Queen is doubtlessly on her way back with the help they’ll need to secure the liberation of their world, and there are times when she cannot help but wonder why she is Princess and not Dané, for Dané’s passion and eloquence is such that she can raise even Ellie’s flagging spirits and give her hope when fear and doubt begin to try to set in.

 **15.) Breath:** The third time she’s hit, she knows as soon as it happens, because the shock of the pain from her perforated stomach literally knocks the breath out of her.

 **16.) Mind:** Her mind keeps wandering, so much so that she can’t keep her focus on Jinna and what she keeps so urgently telling her, and it’s right about the time that Jinna begins to cry that it occurs to her that she’s probably hurt a lot more badly and in more danger than she was the other two times she was hit.

 **17.) Think:** She thinks that it’s entirely possible that she might be dying, and all she can do is lay there, with her mind wandering everywhere, and be impotently angry that she wasn’t fast enough to get out of the line of fire in time to avoid getting hit.

 **18.) Share:** She used to talk about everything that went on her life with her parents and four older sisters, but she knows, if she survives this, that this – the agony in her side that would have her screaming if only she could catch her breath; the reality of the danger; the nearness to which she is increasingly certain she’s coming to death – is something she will _never_ share with anyone in her family (not willingly, anyway).

 **19.) Toy:** She had this toy, once (a stuffed bantha by the name of Little Miss Fluffy, of all the inane, ridiculous things), when she was a child, that she would take with her literally _everywhere_ and without which she could not sleep well, able to relax only if she had a hold of it, so she could cuddle it close to her chest, and she has a strange longing, now, for that little plush toy, as they desperately rush about trying to help her without hurting her any worse than she already is, so that she’ll hopefully make it until they can get back to the safe house and get her some real help. 

**20.) Guard:** Her guard and (pitifully few) remaining handmaidens close ranks around her so absolutely that, even when she does start to feel better, she’s fairly certain that they aren’t going to let anyone short of the Queen herself in to see her.

 **21.) Moonlight:** There’s not enough moonlight to be able to really see where she’s stepping, but she’s going absolutely out of her mind, cooped up like she has been in the safe house, and, if she doesn’t get out and at least get some fresh air, she’s afraid that she’s going to start screaming and not be able to stop, so really, blundering about half blind at night on largely unfamiliar ground is an acceptable risk, to her way of thinking.

 **22.) Sunshine:** The sunshine feels like a benediction, when they finally agree to let her out of the safe house, and she’s entirely happy just to sit in the warm blanketing beam of light and relax until she beings to drift off to sleep.

 **23.) Wish:** Her fondest wish always used to be that she could do something to help bring the peace and prosperity of Naboo to other worlds in the Republic, and it is to her everlasting anger, sorrow, and shame that she now finds herself simply wishing instead that Naboo might once again be able to know true peace and prosperity.

 **24.) Undecided:** She’s not sure this plan of the Queen’s will succeed; yet, hesitant or not, undecided or not about the likelihood of any positive outcome from an attempt at something so reckless, she’s going to publicly support her Queen until the bitter end, for this plan is a source of hope that’s desperately needed by the people.

 **25.) Heaven:** It occurs to her, rather vindictively, to hope that, if there’s a heaven or any kind of afterlife at all, that Neimoidians simply won’t be allowed in; almost as soon as she’s had the thought, though, she feels badly for wishing such a terrible fate on an entire species when surely not all of them are involved with the Trade Federation, and so adjusts her thinking to specifically target the Trade Federation and its smarmy Viceroy.

 **26.) Dispose:** Ellie desperately wants to dispose of everything that would or could ever possibly remind her of the Trade Federation’s occupation; some things can never really be gotten rid of, though, not even if the physical scars are all erased, and, though she and her family have been (relatively) lucky (in that they have all survived this horrible experience), she fears that the aftereffects of having lived through the invasion and occupation will never fully leave her.

 **27.) Illusive:** It’s an illusive sensation, the triumph of victory, for almost as soon as they’ve won the planet back, they’ve been robbed of their rightful due, as the lawyers and corrupt Judicials and career politicians and other vultures immediately swoop in, snatch up, and spirit off the criminals responsible for all the pain and misery they’ve suffered, with nary so much as even a single cred left behind in reparations to go towards trying to repair all of the damage that’s been inflicted on Naboo and the sentient beings of Naboo.

 **28.) Inside:** She finds herself crying and raging a lot, when she’s alone inside her rooms or locked in her ’fresher with the water option on and the sonics off, and it worries her, how emotional she’s become, because she knows that the grief for the people she personally lost during the invasion and occupation still hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

 **29.) Home:** She’s not entirely sure where home _is_ anymore – not when there isn’t really anywhere on the whole of the planet that feels truly safe any longer and her private quarters and offices have all been ransacked, robbed, or outright destroyed during the occupancy – but she doesn’t feel even a little bit safe in the Palace, either, and so she flees from her guest quarters back to the patched-up remnants of her former places of residence and work the instant the Queen gives her the option of doing so.

 **30.) Sleep:** Some days she longs to simply stay in bed and just sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep for days or even weeks on end; she knows, though, logically speaking, that her apparent exhaustion is really just the residual (highly traumatic) effects of the invasion and occupation talking, and so she deliberately limits her sleep cycle to no more than five or six hours a day (except maybe for once or twice a month, as a reward at the end of a particularly busy week, so that she won’t be in danger of burning herself out or making herself ill) and avoids her bedroom as much as possible when she’s not sleeping in it.

 **31.) Phone:** She’s not allowed to go anywhere alone – not even the ’fresher, for pity’s sake! – without at least three different comm units in easy reach of her hands, because her guards and her handmaidens are all so paranoid about her falling somewhere and not being able to get back up or call for help, even though she’s not an invalid, and she’s so damned tired of being coddled like a sickly baby that she’s almost more likely to avoid using the comm, even if she were to fall, if only out of spite and sheer stubbornness.

 **32.) Discover:** It doesn’t really surprise her to discover that the Queen is in love with that young Jedi (who wouldn’t fall for such a handsome, polite, strong, heroic young man?), but it does surprise her, a little, to find out just how close the young Knight and new Master to the even younger hero of Naboo, Anakin Skywalker, also seems to be to Padmé Amidala, given how seriously he seems to take his responsibilities and duties as a Jedi and the injunction against attachments that the Jedi largely seem to abide by, outside of their own Order.

 **33.) Investigate:** The Senate and the Judicial Department both keep promising that there will be a full investigation into the various wrongs, war crimes, and crimes against sentiency that have been committed against the sovereign state of Naboo, the residents of Naboo, and various specific individuals involved in or related to those working in the various branches of Nabooian government; nothing ever seems to actually happen, though, in spite of all the impassioned talk and fine-sounding promises, even those given by the newly elected (Nabooian!) Supreme Chancellor, and the sheer inability of the Republic to enforce its own laws regarding the protection of sovereign member states is so wholly frustrating that there are times when she finds herself wondering if the Separatists may not be right about at least one thing and if the democratic system of the Republic mightn’t already be irreparably broken.

 **34.) Confide:** She knows she doesn’t confide in her handmaidens nearly as much as Amidala does in hers, but then, her handmaidens seem to have a higher mortality rate than the Queen’s do, and frankly she’s found it hard to trust them, since they’re basically all fairly new to service and they all conspire together to find ways to keep her from her work and sworn duty for no better reason than “the sake of her health.”

 **35.) Follow:** She’s aware of the fact that most of the population of Naboo would gleefully traipse after their young Queen into the mouth of hell itself, if she asked them to follow her there, but it doesn’t truly bother her that Amidala – who was safely off the planet for most of the occupation and its senseless brutality – is more lauded than those of them who stayed behind and fought ceaselessly for Naboo’s freedom, for it means (in her mind, at least) that Amidala is the one the Trade Federation and their hirelings will target first, for losing them Naboo, and, to her (admittedly somewhat cynical and perhaps even a tad bit brutal) way of thinking, it’s always a good thing when there are fewer people who’re prepared to specifically target her and hers.

 **36.) Threat:** After enough evidence is finally carefully gathered up to make it impossible for the Trade Federation to get out of at least having to pay some kind of monetary restitution for the harm its blockade, invasion, and occupation inflicted on both the world and its peoples, the threat of retribution from the furiously vindictive Trade Federation becomes so high that they double her guard again and treble the Queen’s; yet, for all these protective measures, there seems to be no way to consistently keep all of the crazies and the assassins away, and she and Amidala both start to loose guards and handmaidens at an increasingly rapid rate, to the point where she finally allows her handmaidens to hound her into retiring from her position as Princess of Theed for the sake of her health (though she does it less for her supposedly fragile and over-stressed nerves than she does out of a desire – possibly misplaced, but quite strong – to preserve the life of at least _one_ of her original handmaidens, if at all possible . . . a fact that’s driven home by her insistence on acting as one of the primary advisers for the new Princess of Theed, to try to help her avoid becoming yet another irresistible target for the Trade Federation’s lackeys, even if it ends up backfiring, somewhat, since her handmaidens seem to seize on her insistence to keep working with the government as an excuse to stay with her, instead of retiring, as is technically their right, now that she is no longer officially the Princess of Theed). 

**37.) Survive:** Her body has (technically) survived the attack on their reelected Queen (though she’s quite sure that she has no idea whatsoever just why she was ever so foolish as to throw herself between the bounty hunter and his rightful prey), but her health hasn’t, and there are days when she wonders if perhaps it wouldn’t have been better if she’d received a quick clean death in battle instead of surviving to suffer through this slow, painful dissolution and increasing weakness and invalidism. 

**38.) Together:** She was in the emergency Healers’ ward together with Amidala’s older sister after the attack, watching and listening as Sola Naberrie lost her second child, and a part of her knew, then, that the woman was going to be problematic; no one else seemed to worry about her at all, though, and she was the Queen’s only blood sibling, after all, and so Ellie held her peace about her suspicions and, later on, did her best to keep a discreet and surreptitious watch on her, to make sure that at least one person would always have a close eye on Sola. 

**39.) Remember:** Some days she has a hard time recalling just what it was that drove her into politics (especially those days when the attacks come, and yet another handmaiden of the Queen, the Senator, or the Princess of Theed, or even another Princess of Theed has been slain), but then she remembers the terrified looks on the faces of her staff when the Trade Federation invaded with its droid armies, and she knows all over again that it’s just something she _has_ to do.

 **40.) Mistake:** It was a mistake to try to walk unaided so soon, but Goddess bless, she’s so damn _tired_ of being stuck in bed or in a chair, and the Healers keep insisting she should eventually be able to walk again, and she wanted to try it alone, first, to keep from humiliating herself before anyone, which (of course!) means that now she’s going to get to suffer the indignity of having to be picked up out of the floor by either her handmaidens or her guard or a combination of both.

 **41.) Try:** The Healers keep telling her to work harder and to try harder and not to give up, and some days she just wants to snarl at them and demand to know just what the frak it is that they think she’s doing, when she keeps on attempting to walk by herself and pushing herself to go further and further along the railing, if not trying and not working hard, but the look of hope in her newest primary handmaiden’s eyes every time she succeeds at something else makes her grit her teeth and bite her tongue and force herself to just smile and keep on pushing herself harder.

 **42.) Fall:** She’s just so gorram _tired_ of banging herself up, falling, that she finally tells them to either get her some mats or else move her to a completely padded set of rooms for the rest of her rehabilitation, and, though the Healers seem shocked by the notion, her primary handmaiden (a surprisingly lovely and even more surprisingly fierce and loyal young woman by the name of Surana Barakis, who’d been one of the few handmaidens of the unfortunately short-lived Princess Chanté Cielle to survive her Princess’ death and who’s been attached to Ellie’s staff ever since then, a little over a year prior to the Queen’s reelection) sees to it that they bring the mats and line essentially all of the floors for her.

 **43.) Redo:** If she could redo things, the only thing she’d change would be her reflexes – she’d make sure she knew how to react fast enough to keep both herself and those around her from being hit by anything or anyone at all, blast it, and she’d also make certain that enough attention was paid to the foreboding of coming disaster that plagued so many prior to the invasion (instead of playing the wait and see game) to be sure of having enough supplies set aside in safe places that their little resistance wouldn’t have to worry about undertaking missions that would be far too dangerous (and costly, in lives) because of their various supply shortages – and she’s fairly certain that would be enough to keep a number of tragedies and serious incidents from occurring.

 **44.) Experiment:** They tell her so many times that combining bota and bacta is still in the experimental stages that she dryly starts to refer to herself as the mad scientists’ new experiment, doggedly insisting on the appellation (amused by the comparison even if no one else seems to be) despite the fact that the nickname seems to horrify and infuriate her handmaidens and to badly irritate the Healers.

 **45.) Hollow:** There’s a constant hollow feeling in the center of her chest, where her heart used to be, right up until the day when they finally tell her she can get back to work again (if only on a very limited advisory basis) . . . at which point her heart instantly springs back into (painful) life.

 **46.) Missing:** In the years that follow, she comes to feel as if she’s missing entire chunks out of her life, due to all her injuries, and, by the time the Clone Wars break out, she knows, with absolute certainty, that, even if the war ends quickly and the Separatists end up making adequate reparations to all of the worlds and peoples they’ve harmed, by inciting such a civil war, she’s never going to be able to completely forgive them (especially the Trade Federation) for the many wrongs they’ve perpetrated against the sentient beings of the galaxy.

 **47.) Broken:** She refuses to behave as if she were a broken doll, and her insistence on doing as much as she is possibly physically able to do for herself by herself drives her poor handmaidens to distraction, but she’s far too set in her ways to try to change her habits, even for her First.

 **48.) Sympathy:** She seems to receive sympathy for her various injuries everywhere she goes, and so, when she suggests to the Queen that perhaps a contingent of the walking wounded should go to Coruscant and testify against the Trade Federation and their ilk, to secure the sympathy of the Senate for Naboo for whenever it comes time for reparations to be made, she’s probably only a little less than half kidding.

 **49.) Collide:** She’ll never forget how she found out: she was heading up to the offices kept in the Palace for the Princess of Theed and her staff for the days of open judgment (when the royal court and the judiciaries of Theed were all available to hear complaints and petitions from the residents of Theed and anyone else who made it in to Theed on such a day from elsewhere on the planet) when a tear-blinded Princess of Theed by the name of Quianna Alcmene ran headlong into her, and, for once, though the collision was hard, no one fell, though the world surely fell out from under her feet only moments later, anyway, when the young girl exclaimed, “Goddess save us, Ellie, but Senator Amidala has been confirmed killed in the Battle of Coruscant!”

 **50.) Surprise:** It doesn’t really surprise her much that Sola Naberrie was a traitor working with the Sith Lord Sidious or that the two Jedi who have worked so well together for so long that most of the galaxy simply refers to them as the Team are a true couple now, but it does surprise her that everyone seems to think that suffering High Justice will be punishment enough for the Separatists, after all the havoc and destruction they’ve wrought, and so she starts looking into the possibility of presenting that testimony before the Senate she’d sort of half jokingly suggested to the previous Queen after all . . . just in case there’s something else that she can do to help make sure that _true_ justice is fully served.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU (in my defense, though, when I started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Princess Ellie. She'll be showing up again, in a more prominent role, whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for an AU novel that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!


End file.
